In the same spirit, we should once a year spend a day with ourselves blindfolded, or use a wheelchair to understand what is like to be a disabled person.
"I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people." - Richard Feynmann
This article reminds me of my father. After my mother died, he's living alone in my home town. He spend most of his days without talking to anyone, but I know he's keeping a diary. And I'm sure he has a lot of story to tell, but the problem is how. As a shy Japanese man who's born in 1940s' he isn't a very talkative type, especially to his son. I think I should go back seeing him occassionaly, but I might still miss the opportunity of listening. I'm just writing here to remind myself. I should do something about it. Probably.
This. I'm always amazed by a skilled taxi driver maneuvering their car at a busy street in Tokyo with bustling pedestrians and bikes, some of them are old and slow and others ignoring traffic lights, just passing them by centimeters. It's like as if the car is a part of their body and they're threading though a crowd. They have to anticipate everyone else's move. The cars really look like people here and others treat them as ones.
Aside from jQuery, I'm just amazed at how good the gov.uk is. They're comprehensive and accessible. Isn't this the pinnacle of government websites? I only wish that our government site (Japan) is half as good.
Hate to be negative, but this new site design of IEEE Spectrum is just abhorrent. It's ad-ridden and there's an infinite scrolling thing. I use reader mode, but I miss the old design. Sigh
I'm curious of the eventual consequence of emoji development. Early Chinese characters were pretty much like pictograms. They have developed into a highly sophisticated abstract language / writing system, but its emoji-like aspects still remain today. The major shortcoming of today's emojis is that they are too hardware dependent and not hand-writable. It's interesting that the world is basically reinventing the same thing a few millenniums later.
I feel that the study is dated. Nowadays (at least on iOS) VoiceOver is pretty good: they can read almost all parts of the contents, maps, and even texts on pictures. Not sure how much of it is designed with illiterate people in mind, but wouldn't be surprised if they are. Mobile phones are truly becoming a device of empowerment now.
A university teacher. I work from the office for now but without student. I understand the appeal of online classes but man do I miss in-person teaching. In an online class, there's virtually no reaction from students (as most students here prefer to turn the camera off) and I feel like I'm a YouTuber who's constantly talking to an empty camera.
Sadly this kind of small sexualization is very common in most manga media. I grew up in Japan and thought this is normal, only finding out later in a Western country this is appalling. Once you have a more global perspective, I see this is certainly a concern, as Japan's gender gap in the STEM area is worse than any developed country (can't quote the number for now, but take a look at the World Gender Gap Index). The problem is compounded when some people (like ones in this very thread) brush this off as "oh this is just a drawing why so serious haha" when modern-day sexism is just a collection of many, many small things.
The discussions around web3 reminds me of the days when people were looking for a "killer app" for Web 2.0. Was there any? I don't remember much, but I don't think there was a single thing that stood out as "the" Web 2.0 app. I expect web3 to be more or less the same. A lot of buzz, not much material.
FWIW, the rest of the world where Christianity isn't a major religion, Christmas isn't special either. In Japan, people perceive this as a fancy Western festive event, just like Valentine's Day but there's no holiday. Our real seasonal holiday is a New Year Day and it's common that people work at late night in Christmas to prepare for it.
I wonder who would be actually interested in the decentralization part if there was no Bitcoin/NFT bubble? My guess is "not many".
I mean, those people exist, but it's probably the same number of people who are into Mastodon, etc. They are not the mainstream. The majority of people seem happy with the current model.
So, while the concept of Web3 looks interesting, after this initial frenzy dies down, I bet there will be a long winter coming to Web3 town.
In Japan, there were a couple of ski lifts that make almost 90-degree turn, called "bending lift (屈曲リフト)". Near the turning point they put up a warning sign like "please hold tight or you might be thrown off". As a kid I always enjoyed the experience though. Sadly all of them have been torn down by about a decade ago, due to its high maintenance cost.
Maybe they are good books, but I found that most of these summaries are bland and generic, as in these phrases:
"The book is strictly about career development and it has a lot of insights ..."
"The book is filled with classic and fresh anecdotes, thoughtful examples, ..."
"This book is amazing to understand the corporate structure and how you should behave ..."
These generic praises aren't good enough to overcome my threshold of interest, so to speak. A better way, if I'd suggest, is to pick a choice quote from the books. Quotes can be hit and miss, but when they click, it can pique the reader's interest in a much more acute way.
Every time I read about decentralization, I remember this episode from NPR Planet Money (one of the best podcasts, btw). It's about Libertarian Summer Camp where they tried to spend a day without fiat money. Gold standard everything. Turned out it's actually pretty hard because you have to get gold, and make sure the gold isn't fake, all by yourself. You bought a hotdog with the gold and now you have to worry about if it contains anything FDA-banned substances, etc etc.
Being decentralized means that all the efforts that a central government is currently taking will be distributed to everyone, and now everyone has to worry about things that were taken granted before: basic safety, security and trust. This is why there aren't many decentralized systems that caught on because their usability is pretty bad for most people.